Restaurant review: ‘If you’re charging a tenner for a sandwich, it had better be good, and these cheffy sambos are’

Our critic tries out a popular D4 lunch spot offering restaurant-style food on bread

Carved in Ballsbridge, Dublin. Photo: Mark Condren

Katy McGuinness

Caseificio Borderi, located on the market street in Ortigia, Sicily, in among the fruit and vegetable stalls and just down from the guys on the corner selling little plastic cups of illicit sea urchins, rich, sweet and salty, out of their backpacks, is one of the most famous sandwich shops in the world.

Andrea and Gaetano Borderi start taking orders at 9.30am, and if you leave it until closer to lunchtime, you’ll find yourself queueing for an hour or more. There’s no menu, per se, but the Borderis will ask you if there is any ingredient you don’t like before creating a magnificent multi-layered personalised extravaganza containing anything from several types of cooked meat and cheese to aubergine jam and sun-dried tomatoes. It’s only a sandwich insofar as the ingredients are ‘contained’ within the two halves of a bread roll.